An Iowa judge tossed out President Donald J. Trump’s lawsuit against vaunted pollster Ann Selzer over a 2024 pre-election poll showing him being beaten by Kamala Harris in the Hawkeye State.
The poll by Selzer and the Des Moines Register was heavily hyped in the final days before the election, in which Trump would go on to bulldoze the hapless Harris, another example of how the media was completely in the bag for the Democrats.
“Iowa Poll: Kamala Harris leapfrogs Donald Trump to take lead near Election Day”@DMRegister 🤡🤡🤡🤡🤡https://t.co/iGgzuDQUCL pic.twitter.com/cuV0G6gxWU
— Tony Heller 🇺🇸 🇯🇵 (@TonyClimate) November 11, 2024
Trump easily won the key battleground state by double digits, blowing out the ex-veep 56-43. A result that showed just how badly off the mark that Selzer’s polling was.
“A totally Fake poll that caused great distrust and uncertainty at a very critical time. She knew exactly what she was doing,” Trump said in a November 2024 post to Truth Social, suggesting that Selzer rigged her poll.
According to the election’s winner, the poll wasn’t only a complete flop but also constituted “brazen election interference” that resulted in a lawsuit against the now-retired polling wizard, her polling firm, Iowa’s top newspaper and its publisher, claiming that it was a violation of the state’s consumer protection laws.
“There was a perfectly good reason nobody saw this coming: because a three-point lead for Harris in deep-red Iowa was not reality,” the complaint argued. “It was election-interfering fiction.”
On Wednesday, Iowa District Judge Scott J. Beattie disagreed and dismissed the lawsuit and its “faulty” claims, siding with Selzer and the paper.
A setback in Trump’s broader legal campaign against news outlets: An Iowa judge has dismissed his lawsuit against pollster J. Ann Selzer, her polling company, the Des Moines Register and Gannett. https://t.co/gdxTkrqQ2T
— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) September 23, 2026
“At its core, the Plaintiffs’ Petition seeks to stretch both Iowa statutory and common law beyond their current bounds, turning speech that enjoys the highest category of First Amendment protection into a liability,” Beattie wrote in his ruling.
“After considering the parties’ arguments, the Court must conclude that the protection is too great and the reach is too far. The case must therefore be dismissed,” the judge added.
Selzer cheered the judge’s dismissal of the lawsuit.
“Polling is a social science, not clairvoyance, and no responsible pollster can guarantee an election outcome,” she said in a Wednesday statement.
“What we can guarantee is that we will follow the data wherever it leads, even when the results are uncomfortable or unexpected. I am grateful that Judge Beattie’s ruling recognizes these principles and reaffirms the fundamental freedom to pursue and publish the truth without political interference,” Selzer added.
It was another legal setback for Trump, who only hours later would see a federal judge, whom he put on the bench, temporarily block his ban of three “fake news” organizations from the White House.
A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team said that he would appeal the Iowa ruling.
“President Trump is committed to holding responsible those who traffic in deception and fake news,” the spox said in a statement to media outlets. “The Des Moines Register and Gannett knowingly ran a phony poll from the now disgraced Democrat pollster Ann Selzer in a[n] unlawful attempt to interfere in the 2024 Presidential Election and to defraud Americans into believing Kamala Harris was winning the state of Iowa and nationwide, mere hours before she lost Iowa and the overall election by huge margins.”
“This scam was designed to damage President Trump’s dominant campaign in the final days of the race. Such fraud cannot be allowed to stand, and President Trump will take his powerful case to the Iowa Supreme Court in order to see it through to a just and winning conclusion,” the president’s spokesperson added.
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